Classes are over

(This flag hung over campus this whole year, it was given to me for keepsake)

We have reached the end of the school year. 10 months flew by fast. The idea was to get a job that will keep me busy while I waited for my paperwork to come through and everything worked marvelously timewise. Frankly, it's been a little difficult now that I'm thinking of leaving. I finally found a job that I really like and fell naturally in. This is a job that I could do for a lifetime, how many of you can honestly say that about your work.
Most students were lovely, except for the few that caused havoc. I will not miss discipline, that is something that I detested but knew as part of the job. However, these were only the few, four at most per class, that had to be controlled. The majority were respectful and always on task. There will be no more "Marlo, sit down," or "Valeria, be quite," and "focus, Manuel, focus." Most memorable was when a couple of my students decided that they wanted to see what would happen if they threw a match in one of the trash bins in my class on their way out. I was mad, I don't think they had ever seen me this angry. I knew that no one would fess up to the crime and so was up front with them and said that we were in for a long while until we found the culprits. School counselors were always supportive of decisions made by me in the class and with their help manage to uncover the pyromaniacs to whom suspensions were handed out. Simple to say, that in the end my focus was not always on the problem ones, but providing for those that wanted to learn a learning environment. No matter how harsh I was with them by speaking in hard tones or sending them to the Counselor's office for punishment, in the end they all (except for Valeria) mentioned that they were going to miss me.
It is a push and pull with students of this kind, you are respectful to them, but they see that as weakness and try to manipulate. If you are flexible with them, they try to see how far they can go. If you run the risk of becoming a "friend" to them, then they think that no matter what they do you will not punish them. Its all in perspective I think, and in the end it was one-on-one conversations that really clarified how things should be in a Teacher-student relationship.
El Alba's Administrators took a risk with me. I had never formally taught before (only in afterschool programs: not the same), and I did not know how long I was available for the school year (promised six months in the beginning). However, I was available and ready to go at the beginning, and somehow in addition to other things, it was this quality that would define my endeavor at El Alba. True, I've never taught Life Science before, but I would never go unprepared to class. I would read up on the lessons and research on them more than needed until I knew them by heart. I was even stopped in the beginning and reminded that I was not teaching college level science and boggin down sixth graders with too much information. I knew I was being watched so I had to put on my best performance.
I'm going to miss El Alba, and will be back to visit.